Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo
Representative Ilhan Omar speaking at an anti-war rally outside the Capitol, January 9, 2020
If you were to judge solely by the headlines, you might be forgiven for thinking that the progressive foreign-policy agenda is defined only by what it opposes: against starting new wars, against the U.S. policing the entire world, but never for anything. As I’ve written elsewhere, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The progressive movement has a bold vision for a more just, peaceful, and prosperous world. Enacting that vision means basing U.S. foreign-policy decisions in a set of consistent principles to drive our engagement with the world.
Yesterday, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar introduced a package of seven pieces of legislation that shows us how we can begin to reform U.S. foreign policy to achieve our shared vision of justice, equality, and safety for all.
The package, titled “Pathway to PEACE,” seeks to set out a common set of standards of behavior and norms that fundamentally change how the U.S. engages with the world. Calling for the U.S. to ratify the Rome Statute, which would bring the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), is a commonsense first step toward legitimizing a multilateral global justice system. Yet it remains extremely controversial—so much so that in 2002 Congress passed the Hague Invasion Act. Signaling that the United States, whatever its military might, should not be immune from accountability for egregious breaches of international law would increase the United States’ legitimacy to lead multilateral efforts to hold human-rights abusers responsible.
Additionally, her bills to accede to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and U.N. Global Compact on Migration, and calling for a new binding international agreement on global migration, would force a reckoning with how U.S. domestic, foreign, and immigration policies impact some of the most vulnerable among us. These resolutions shouldn’t be controversial. The UNCRC has so far been ratified by 196 nations—that’s every single eligible nation except for the United States—whereas the Global Compact on Migration is a nonbinding agreement to uphold minimum standards of treatment of migrants.
In acceding to these international conventions, Representative Omar’s bills would put the United States in a position to not only address failed past U.S. policies, but set an example of what the international community should do next. By further calling for the adoption of a new, binding Global Migration Agreement to address the root causes of migration, Omar offers a welcome alternative path toward humanely addressing the mass displacement that has resulted from decades of U.S. wars abroad and the growing effects of the climate crisis.
Given the power of the U.S. financial system, economic sanctions have become a reflexive weapon of choice over the last several decades—despite widespread evidence that they actually undermine stated policy goals. Representative Omar has distinguished herself in Congress as a vocal critic of the knee-jerk use of blanket economic sanctions by the executive branch. The impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea are illustrative: These sanctions have unleashed vast and indiscriminate suffering on innocent civilian populations. By reforming the International Emergency Powers Act to require Congress affirmatively approve executive branch sanctions, Congress would be forced to reckon with their true consequences.
The final three pieces of legislation in Omar’s package show how calls for ending endless war can be operationalized into a clear strategy for the U.S. to be a better force in the world. First, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would help put an end to the U.S. role in driving conflict around the world by creating clearer standards to cut off U.S. security assistance and weapons sales in the face of violations of human rights and international law. By prioritizing weapons sales and security assistance as a key means of influence, the U.S. has not only further militarized its own approach to mitigating violence, but those of other countries as well, ultimately leading to U.S. complicity in crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights.
The Global Peacebuilding Act and the YouthBuild International Act show us what the U.S. should be doing instead of waging endless wars. Rather than continuing to throw money away at the Pentagon to violently enforce security around the world—a strategy that has failed disastrously—these initiatives would help fund local actors’ ability to address the underlying causes of conflict through peacebuilding and youth empowerment. These bills represent critical moves away from over-reliance on ineffective military might to address conflict, and toward the investment in alternative tools that can actually help engender peace.
Since World War II, the United States has claimed to be a force for good in the world, and sought to hold other countries accountable to the international rules-based order that it helped create. But for almost as long, the U.S. has treated itself as the exception to these same rules—in effect undermining its own power to set international standards and norms. Representative Omar’s package seeks to reverse that trend and instead help legitimize a multilateral approach to global justice as the foundation of a more peaceful world. While these bills do not, in themselves, form a complete blueprint for a new approach to foreign policy, they are bold, concrete examples of the type of policy changes that the progressive movement should be fighting for. For advocates of progressive foreign policy, Congresswoman Omar’s “Pathway to PEACE” charts the way forward.
